Forms Of Webspam That Google Seems To Be Failing To Get To Grips With

Other than the perennial paid and sponsored links, these are the forms of webspam that Google seems to be failing to get to grips with in 2025 from what I see :

• low quality review "listicles" with self-citations in “best” listicle content (e.g. listing myself in an article on "top seo freelancers in the UK") on my own website – this is arguably one of the newer and most powerful types of webspam in the AI Overview / AI mode era of Google (these citation are sometimes used on Chatgpt too). 

    Some of these low quality listicles are sometimes used as citations in the Google Knowledge Graph "best"-type list results listed as "from sources around the web" and also in Bing "best"-type list results generated using AI from multiple "sources around the web" – see https://www.seolondonsurrey.co.uk/blog/quality-webspam-issues-in-some-google-ai-overviews.

    These low quality review “listicles” sometimes can be found on "pay to play" review websites (not necessarily always including including self-citations) . E.g. some LLMs use the following "review site" as a citation. For the review website in question's "Top PPC Agencies" listings, the "Top Rated" agencies are listed 3rd, 4th and 6th (which is not what I would expect)! See below:

   See https://developers.google.com/search/docs/specialty/ecommerce/write-high-quality-reviews / https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content

• businesses with keyword-stuffed names / at non-eligible virtual offices on the Google Map
  

• digital marketing agencies misrepresentating Google Partner status (when they have never been one or their Partner status has expired)
  

• spammy use of schema markup to get product review star ratings (for businesses that don't sell products) in Google SERPs. The businesses in question often appear to be digital marketing agencies...

    See related articles: 

1. (Legal) Negative PPC / SEO / Social Media Tool Kits  

2.  SEO In 2025